They were the living proof of the existence of a borderline, the sense of all frontiers, the violence of attack and unsolicited cultural penetration. They were called barbarians, outsiders, speakers of incomprehensible gibberish...

When Vasari met Titian in Venice, two years prior to publishing the second edition of his Lives (1568), he beheld a man in the winter of life, but also an artist "admired and imitated in many things, like those who have created and continue to create infinitely praiseworthy things".